Two ways to make color masks

Luminosity masks, color masks, and saturation/vibrance masks. The TK7 panel can make all of these. While infinity color masks significantly upgraded the color masks in the TK7 panel, there’s always been another useful way to make color masks in the RapidMask module, and in some situations it can be even better than infinity color masks. It’s the Color > Create command in the SOURCE section. The video below walks you through this “other” color mask, compares it to infinity color masks, and describes situations where one type of color mask might work better than the other.

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6 thoughts on “Two ways to make color masks”

OK, Thought I had it all figured out. Now you show another dimension. Both Color and Luminosity are ripe with great tools to adjust. I should have known that but this really proves it with real examples. Thanks so much!

Tony, As always a great article. On the second image where the infinity color picker worked on the rocks and the adjustment layer approach worked will on the sky I noticed that using the create command to select the sky and then inverting the mask did a great job for the rocks. Sometimes selecting the “wrong” thing works best. I still like the infinity color picker best because it is so much easier to optimize the mask.

On a totally different subject have you ever printed on awagami paper? I stumbled across it the other day was talking to Steve about trying some. Just curious if you have ever tried it.

With color masks, I generally like to see good image texture in the mask for the areas being selected and black in the mask for the areas I don’t want to select. For me at least, that gives the best results when I make adjustments through color masks. If I were to invert my sky selection to a rock selection, that means rock selection would end up a texture-less white. That might work to darken the rocks, but I’d be concerned about whether or not it would blend as well as a mask that still reveals image texture in the selected pixels.